Translated by Katharine Brewcott Wormeley Letters of Mlle. de Lespinasse, with notes on her life and character by d'Alembert, Marmontel, de Guibert, etc. , and an introd. by C. A. Sainte-Beuve.

Elinor Joddrell is an extreme example of a woman whose attempts to take charge of her life meet with continual defeat. But Burney's heroines often find themselves frustrated in their attempts to direct events by the sheer randomness of experience. Evelina's letter to Orville miscarries in an early example of how happenstance derails the romance plot, but Burney's later heroines all encounter some character or characters who, like Mr. Dubster in Camilla, stall the action of the novel into stretches of comic tedium by their unintended obstructions. The benevolent but absent-minded Giles Arbe in The Wanderer is perhaps Burney's most accomplished plot-spoiler: his inability to deliver notes and to remember who should or should not be privy to certain information renders all Juliet's plans useless. While clearly marked as a «good» character, Arbe stands for the randomness of life's events that thwarts the heroine's attempts to control the course of her life. Waiting and anticlimax are woven into the very experience of reading The Wanderer ...»